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Hail to the mouse king: Disney fans assemble for Newark show

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The sketch for 'Mickey's Toothache,' an unfinished cartoon from 1938, is part of the Disney 'Fanniversary' show coming to Newark. The image was released from Disney archives this year.
(Photo by Disney)

He is also aware of the typical response to the idea that, at 27 years old, his passion for the Magic Kingdom — Mickey, Cinderella's castle and animated fairy tales about princesses — is not diminished. As Vasilo puts it, "Oh, you're really into kids' movies ... that's weird."

But he isn't shaken by such a reaction.

"It's really not about that," says Vasilo, a high school tutor who lives in Sayreville. After all, his fandom is a matter of legacy. He grew up in a Disney household, raised by a father who himself worshipped "Cinderella," wishing as hard as Pinocchio wished to be a real boy that he would someday marry a woman with "yellow hair." (He did.)

A Disney archivist and fan club representative hosts each show, like this one in Burbank, Calif. at Walt Disney Studios.Disney

A traveling program, it's no stage show, no "Disney on Ice." There are no monorails, trams, snaking lines or screaming children. The Fanniversary, a string of behind-the-scenes retrospectives, is as much a lecture about company history as it is a celebration of Disney characters and movies.

Most attending are members of D23, the official Disney fan club, which takes its name from 1923, the year that brothers Walt and Roy Disney came to Hollywood and started their Disney studio. Such trivia is precisely the kind of information being celebrated.

"Anyone going can expect a really fully magical Disney experience," says Vasilo, who has toured the Holy Grail — Cinderella's castle — more than once. And there's more to the show than Mickey's usual crew, Vasilo says. "Characters you wouldn't normally see."

To mark the 25th anniversary of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," Fanniversary hosts will introduce Captain Cleaver, a character who never made it into the movie, a fusion of live-action scenes and animation.

A scene from 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit.' The road show is marking the movie's 25th anniversary by allowing fans a glimpse at Captain Cleaver, a character that was cut from the final version.Touchstone Pictures

The event will also focus on the 20th anniversary of Tim Burton's stop-motion musical "The Nightmare Before Christmas," the 30th anniversary of Epcot's futuristic Horizons attraction and the 70th anniversary of "Saludos Amigos," an animated feature that had its debut in the 1940s. They're all what Jeffrey Epstein, using a frequent Disney descriptor, calls "magical milestones."

D23 started in 2009 and Fanniversary events began last year with a few cities, including New York, says Epstein, marketing manager for the fan club. They've expanded to 10 this year.

"We have a lot of members from New Jersey who came across the bridges and tunnels, so we wanted to give back to them this time," he says, estimating fan club membership to number in the tens of thousands.

In addition to props and Q&As, there's prerecorded video with Disney stars and creative Disney staffers called "Imagineers." (Tweets are encouraged, Epstein says. "It's very interactive.")

A prop from Tim Burton's 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' (1993) will be on display this Saturday. Disney/D23

Another centerpiece of the show is a sketch from an unproduced 1938 cartoon called "Mickey's Toothache," plucked this year from the Disney Archives to mark Mickey Mouse's 85th birthday.

The scene has the famous mouse looking quite distressed in a head bandage, trying to escape the grasp of an anthropomorphic examination chair while a peg-legged dentist chases him with a saw and pliers. That kind of exaggerated terror is mostly lost in today's children's cartoons — along with the dangerous implements.

For Justin Arthur, a lot of that nostalgia revolves around "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Arthur, 25, not only has movie memorabilia at home, but also works at the Disney Archives in Burbank, Calif. as a collections specialist. A presenter at the Newark Fanniversary show, he will be showcasing a snarling pumpkin prop from Tim Burton's 1993 movie.

"I knew, ever since I was a kid, that I wanted to work for Disney," he says, having grown up in the "second golden age" of Disney animation during the late '80s and '90s, when "The Little Mermaid" swooshed ashore with her sea creature friends and "Beauty and the Beast" sent parents searching for yellow ball gown costumes. Arthur started working for the company in college, hosting at Disney World's Jungle Cruise.

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His Newark co-presenter, Billy Stanek, grew up in Nebraska — far from any Disney park. Web editor for D23, he remembers culling Disney figurines from McDonald's Happy Meals. Stanek, 30, says he treasured "clamshell"-cased Disney VHS tapes and was transfixed by the likes of Roger and Jessica Rabbit, marking his adoration on paper.

"I just remember drawing all of those," Stanek says.

This summer brings the next big Disney mecca, the biennial Disney Expo, organized near Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. About 40,000 people attended in 2011, and the next affair starts Aug. 9.

Like Trekkies and "Star Wars" fans, many Disney adherents show up in the guise of their favorite character. In the mixed bag of Walt's universe, the possibilities seem immeasurable as fairy dust: Prim Snow White, gnarly Jack Sparrow and, in all her yellow-haired majesty, Cinderella.